The Last Gentle Dentist Reviewed By David W. Menefee of Bookpleasures.com

David W. Menefee

Reviewer
David W. Menefee: David is a Pulitzer nominated American author,
ghost writer, screenwriter, book editor, and film historian. David’s
career began as a writer and marketing representative for the Dallas
Times Herald
and the Dallas
Morning News.
His books have appeared under various imprints and in a variety of
categories, such as biography, travel, historical fiction, mysteries,
and romance. Two books by David were named among the 2011 Top 10
Silent Film Books of the Year: Wally:
The True Wallace Reid Story, and
The
Rise and Fall of Lou-Tellegen.
His most recent releases include Sweet
Memories
and the 1950s romance trilogy, Can't
Help Falling in Love,
Come
Away to Paradise,
and Catch
a Falling Star
(with co-author Carol Dunitz). David lives in Dallas, Texas, USA.

Whenever an emerging
author releases his or her first novel, inquisitive readers’ ears
perk up with interest. We never know who will develop into the next
popular, prolific story weaver. People are now watching author Oliver
Pearl.

Supposedly based on actual
events, The Last Gentle Dentist comes forward from the avalanche of
new novels entering the market. The author has high hopes
that Suggestive Books can give the book a boost in the
market. Whether the book becomes popular or not, the author has
achieved a noteworthy debut.

Judging any author by
their first novel seems like skating on thin ice because time may
prove that the book ultimately fails to reflect the author’s
talent or style. Many authors would dearly love to rewrite (or bury)
their first published work, depending on how their careers pan out.
Their feelings also sometimes colored by reader feedback. What they
write about and their wordsmithing have everything to do with the
public’s opinion.

Pearl opts to enter the
publishing world by delving into the Fifty Shades of Grey milieu with
what he describes as “an erotic novel that offers plenty of
laughing gas.” Yet, few people were laughing when The
Last Gentle Dentistwas chosen to be part of
the Oscar gift bags and autographed copies were given away to over
200 Hollywood stars, producers, and directors on Feb 22, 2013
in the 85th Oscars gift suite. Pearl’s publicist literally reached
for the stars with that promotional coup, and there’s little doubt
that a story about a modern-day Casanova wandering the streets of
Europe and invading the lives of lovers steeped in drugs and illicit
sex will strike home with Hollywood denizens.

Pearl deserves one star
for completing the task of writing a book and pushing the project
through the myriad hoops required to catapult from PC to
publisher. He earns a second star for snagging a well-designed front
and back cover. He receives a third star for writing with generally
good grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and spelling. He gains
a fourth star for constructing the story in well-defined, easy to
follow chapters. He wins a fifth star for tailoring a tale that will
be appreciated by some readers of his niche.

The Last Gentle Dentist
may not appeal to everyone. The author seems to reach too quickly for
the worst kind of profanity, which—arguably—may befit the wanton
type of characters his protagonist encounters, but which will be a
turn off to many. The author sometimes hits yet sometimes misses
proper comma use in serial sentences, and he often elaborates into
extremely long run on sentences. On the other hand, he has a talent
for reaching for extraordinarily expressive words and word phrases.
The author’s first person present tense writing style takes some
time to grow on you, if you can embrace that trendy style that always
makes a book read like a screenplay adapted into a novel:

“I walk into an alley.
Thorny with stabled scooters, it leads into the predatory drone of
Champs Elysees. Second hour into the night, it is full of strollers,
mimes, Eastern European beggars and Middle Eastern thieves moving
away and toward the sea like schools of horse mackerel, fished out in
numbers by kiosks, restaurants, and street acts. That’s the place
to be, the place to flip high the coin of petty anxieties and never
catch it again, the place you can choose to leave or avoid, but once
caught by the glimpse of its cockeyed smirk will be deprived of your
volition and thrown into its heathenish mirth.”

Few writers can control
first person present tense writing without veering off into minutia
that detail what the main character does and thinks every minute,
which also causes a problem with the story’s pacing. You also
highly suspect that authors writing in this style might be
writing about their life as they wish their life had unfolded, and so
they drown the reader in trivial points that mirror their
self-fascination.

We sometimes wonder why
emerging authors so often reach for gimmicks that are all the rage,
such as profanity, gratuitous sex, and odd writing styles. Perhaps
they are merely trying to draw attention to themselves with shock
values. Yet in most cases—as with Pearl’s—these cheap devices
are entirely unnecessary. He has obvious talent, a genuine propensity
for imaginative visualization, and a penetrating insight into
characterizations.

In conclusion, Oliver
Pearl’s The Last Gentle Dentist falls short of being a great book,
yet makes for a good first effort. We can expect more from him,
and we can probably anticipate that he will gravitate toward more
uplifting themes. I suspect that he has in him the aptitude to
produce a timeless classic one day.